"As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves
with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave
or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in
Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's
offspring, heirs according to the promise." Galatians 3:27-29 (NRSV)

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Monday, June 29, 2015

God Was There: Open Hearings on D036 & D037

by the Revd Dr. Cameron Partridge

What a whirlwind the last couple of days at General
Convention have been. Friday the news of the Supreme Court’s decision blew
through Convention like wildfire. People are absolutely jubilant. And then yesterday
Bishop Michael Curry of North Carolina was elected the next Presiding Bishop of
The Episcopal Church on a landslide, first ballot vote. He follows Presiding
Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori as a pioneer: she has been the first woman
elected to this position, while he is the first African American. He is an firey,
articulate preacher and evangelist, the kind of inspiring leader you want to
get up and follow to the ends of the earth. Yesterday the House of Deputies
also discussed C019 “Establish Response to Systemic Racial Injustice”.
As Deputy Jennifer Baskerville Burrows wrote,
“To hear a white member of the [Social Justice and U.S. Policy] committee say
words to the effect of, “we have the chance to make race the centerpiece of the
next triennium” signals a shift.If funded, resolution C019 will put real muscle (to the tune of $1.2
million) behind the work of racial reconciliation for both justice and mission
strategy.”

Amid this intense, spirited movement, two of the resolutions that TransEpiscopal
has been particularly tracking have also made their way through the open
hearing process.

Andrew Amanda testifying
in support of D037

D037 came first. This is the resolution that calls for a
study of the canons to clarify that and/or how people who have legally changed
their name(s) can have their names amended in church records and registries and
church certificates reissued. It came to the committee on Governance and
Structure last night amid several other complex resolutions on the
possibilities of restructuring aspects of our Church’s governance. To begin,
the chaplain of the committee lead us in prayer and a hymn, one of my
favorites: “God is love and where true love is, God [Godself] is there.” When
our resolution came up, something like six or seven of us testified in support of
it. No one testified against. We told stories of how we or people we know have
been impacted in our full access to the life of the Church by not being able to
change records in a consistent way, or to have certificates reissued. After we
were finished, a number of deputies and bishops came up to us, thanking us for
our testimony. As the Structure committee sifts through all the complexities of
the restructuring resolutions, our stories were, as one committee member later
related to me, very straight forward and incarnational. We hope it moves out of
committee and to one of the houses quickly.

Then twelve hours later, at 7:30 this morning, we gathered
again to testify in support of D036. This resolution, on “Adding a Name Change
Liturgy to the Book of Occasional Services”, came to the Committee on
Prayerbook and Liturgy. Once again we began and ended with prayer and song, and once more we had a great group of people prepared to
testify. I am hoping that some of these folks will write about their
experiences as well. I lead off my own testimony by recounting an experience I
had in 2001 when I first claimed my name. I described how I passed a difficult
night, sharing the name Cameron with loved ones. When I went to church the
following morning and was asked to do the first reading, I had been stunned to
find myself standing before the congregation reading the story of Jacob
wrestling with the divine stranger who then gave him the name Israel. Flash
forward several years, my tesimony continued, to my years in parish ministry in which I had a trans parishioner who

Cameron Partridge testifying in support of D036.
Photo credit: the Living Church / Covenant magazine

wanted to take on his chosen name
in the context of the congregation. And so I put together a rite as a component of
the Sunday liturgy, drawing in part upon the name change rite in Changes: Prayers and Services Honoring Rites of Passage that is the
subject of D036. To be able to take up one’s name in the midst of one’s
congregation, to be named and seen in that way, can be a profound recognition
of the deep spiritual significance of embodying one’s name, I concluded. I was also struck that
in addition to the other trans folks who testified—and, again, there were
several powerful speakers – there were non trans ones as well, lifting up the
flexibility of this resource to be used by many people. These were folks in a
religious order who talked about the possibilities of claiming a new name in
connection with religious life. This rite is additionally applicable to
situations like adoption or divorce/remarriage. I especially appreciate that this resource
came out of indigenous Episcopal congregations, communities that have long
recognized the spiritual significance of names and particularly of taking on a
new name later in life.

We now wait for D036 and D037 to go to their houses of
origin. The name change liturgy resolution should first travel to the House of
Bishops, while the name change canon study resolution should head to the House
of Deputies. Meanwhile a number of resolutions related to liturgical marriage equality are coming forward to the Houses of Bishops and Deputies as well. Stay tuned on all of these fronts.Amid all of this, the hymn from the beginning of the D037 hearing continues to echo in my ears: God is love and where true love is, God Godself is there.

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